Ecuador’s Kushki raised a $86m round in what it claimed was the highest valuation Series B in LatAm, valuing the 4-year company nearly at $600m.
The round included investors such as SoftBank Latin America Fund and an undisclosed global growth equity firm, as well as previous investors such DILA Capital, KASZEK, Clocktower Ventures, and Magma Partners.
With operations already in Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile, the firm aims to fuel an aggressive team expansion throughout Latin America with over 200 job openings for software engineering roles. Kushki will also focus on growing into new markets including Brazil and Central America and consolidating its enterprise capabilities.
Founded in 2017 by Ecuadorian serial entrepreneurs Sebastián Castro and Aron Schwarzkopf, Kushki’s platform enables local and cross-border payment players in credit and debit cards in Latin America, bank transfers, digital cash, mobile wallets and other alternative payment methods. The company experienced exponential growth, tripling the size of its team in 2021, it said.
According to Schwarzkopf, the FinTech‘s vision is to provide standardised and regionalized infrastructure so that Latin America‘s digital economy can be installed on top of it for decades to come.
He added, “Utilising payments throughout the region has typically been a fragmented and primitive process because of the lack of investment in banking infrastructure. With this new funding, we’ll be able to accelerate the power of the Kushki infrastructure throughout Latam, democratizing the movement of money for both businesses and consumers.”
Echoing a similar sentiment, SoftBank Group International partner Carlos Medeiros said, “Kushki’s long-term vision and advanced technology infrastructure are well aligned with SoftBank’s vision of digital transformation in Latin America. We are impressed by the company’s rapid developments and recent accomplishments, including the outstanding number of large enterprises across the region leveraging its infrastructure.”
Products similar to Kushki have been successful in other regions around the world, such as in India with Pine Labs, and Africa with Flutterwave and Checkout.com.
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